


Chilly Red Paint

by Okumen



Category: Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu | Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Genre: Community: fandomweekly, Gen, Mentioned Blood & Death in Battle, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:22:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29529807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Okumen/pseuds/Okumen
Summary: A brief conversation.
Collections: FandomWeekly (2019-2021) Writing Challenge on Dreamwidth





	Chilly Red Paint

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Fandom Weeklys 83rd prompt, Below Zero, and got second place.

"The air is breathable, at least," Blumhart commented, though he didn't remove his helmet. The air was indeed breathable, but cold. Letting that cold seep into their suits would do no good, even though the battle was over, at least for the time being.

They were waiting to be picked up by their allies, after their tank had broken down. It turned out that it had been sabotaged, and their scouting unit had to strike down a couple of enemy units with a disadvantage in both terrain and numbers. But they were of the Rosen Ritter regiment, and even the soldiers of the Galactic Empire many of them were long ago born in knew how fearsome their skills were. They ought to have expected that their ambush would not have gone as planned if it came down to actually facing the Rose Knights in actual battle. Ground battle was their speciality, and they had barely lost a handful of men, in comparison to the Empires twenty-five dead and one lieutenant commander captured. They had had to gag the man, as even from inside their tank, his shouts of how he was related to this or that important and-or noble person could be heard even when they were outside.

The landscape was a crisp, wintery one, a large, mostly uninhabited fringe planet that the Empire was trying to take from the Alliance for its natural gaseous resources mined from deep under its surface. The oxygen levels were low, but not to a dangerous level, so long as the weather was clear, as it was at the moment. The cold would likely still sting and burn the throat and lungs, if breathed directly.

The snow was marked by tracks from their transportation, footprints, corpses, and darkening stains of crimson. It was beautiful and macabre, both at once.

"What are you doing?" Blumhart asked Linz. The blond, only his eyes and part of his face visible through the untinted visor of his helmet, had one elbow propped on one of his knees, and he was drawing lines in the air almost absently. Linz blinked, emerging from his minds image to look up from his position on the back of one particularly large Imperial corpse. von Scönkopf grinned, a snorted huff passing the comm link. "He's memorising for his art," he answered for Linz.

"Oh." Blumhart, still a greenhorn, though a very capable one, nodded in understanding. He knew as well as everyone else that Linz enjoyed drawing, whenever he had the opportunity and didn't have to stay at 150% vigilance. Just as von Schönnkopf, for example, enjoyed flirting with women when he didn't have to be on high alert. Though perhaps von Schönkopf was on a worse scale than Linz, when it came to how often he participated in his favourite hobby. He didn't need his hands, after all. "Wouldn't it be easier to remember if he sketched it down, though?" Blumhart turned his question to von Schönkopf.

der Decken, however, was the one who said, "In _this_ weather?" He sounded amused, and he was surely recalling when Linz had said the same in the past, to der Decken himself. "The cold doesn't hinder the finer movements with a tomahawk, but with a pen, on the other hand, it's harder to get the muscles to do as exactly told."

"Mmmh," Linz made a noice of agreement. der Decken had remembered well, how Linz had gone into a long spiel when he had been too thoroughly pulled out of his memorisation process in the past. He wasn't quite there, now, still somewhat absent. "If I can't get it down as I want it, it's better to memorise it, or it'll spoil the image."

Blumhart looked like he didn't quite get that statement, as much as he had der Deckens. So long as he kept surviving, he would learn the difference well enough.

von Schönkopf waved dismissively at Linz. "You do your thing. We'll keep an eye out in the meantime. Do rush, though, in case we need you later." The corners of Linz' lips twitched into an amused smile, before he, with a ''yes, sir'' turned back to look at whatever he had been looking at before Blumhart attracted his attention.

von Schönkopf climbed up onto the broken machine, and around him, his men kept eyes on their weak spots and ears on the transmissions. There were no signs of any other enemy units approaching, so a few moments of some of them taking shifts to relax their minds before the next bout was acceptable, for the time being.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
> 
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